William C. Wagoner
The first part of the unit will consist of students using the monomyth cycle of the Hero's Journey to read and analyze various mythological heroes. One can focus primarily on the Greek heroes, or the unit can be easily adopted to focus on the heroes of any culture. As a starting point it recommended to analyze the heroes of modern popular culture, including the movies, books, and comic book heroes the teacher and student body is familiar with, as these adhere closely to the monomyth cycle. As the primary teaching strategy, students should receive both a graphic organizer of the Hero's Journey, as well as notes concerning each step. This can be done through a lecture with relevant examples from pop culture, through a printed "cheat sheet" of each step, or both. One example of the steps of the Monomyth are as follows;